This day in history: Starting on this day (October 31) in 1923 to April 7 1924, Marble Bar, Australia experienced 160 straight days of 100 degrees (or above) Fahrenheit, setting a world record of most consecutive days at such heat.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the highest temperature ever recorded was 134.1 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 °C) on 10 July 1913 in Furnace Creek (Greenland Ranch), California, United States, though some dispute this.
In 2019 Denver, Colorado, broke their all-time coldest low-temperature record for Halloween at 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The previous record was 10 F, set back in 1991.
One of the highest recorded speeds for a gust of wind was measured at 207 m.p.h. during a storm at Thule Air Base in Greenland on this day in 1972.
It was considered the highest speed at the time, but, there was a wind gust of 231 m.p.h. at Mount Washington, New Hampshire in 1934. That record was broken on April 10 1996 in Barrow Island, Australia with a wind gust of 253 m.p.h.
This Day in History: Jane Nartare Beaumont, Arnna Kathleen Beaumont and Grant Ellis Beaumont, collectively known as the Beaumont children, were three Australian siblings who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia, on 26 January 1966 (Australia Day) in a suspected abduction and murder. At the time of their disappearance they were aged nine, seven and four years, respectively.
Police investigations revealed that, on the day of their disappearance, several witnesses had seen the children on and near Glenelg Beach in the company of a tall man with fairish to light-brown hair and a thin face with a sun-tanned complexion and medium build, aged in his mid-thirties. Confirmed sightings of the three children occurred at the Colley Reserve and at Wenzel's cake shop on Moseley Street, Glenelg. Despite numerous searches, neither the children nor their suspected companion were located.
The case received extensive police and media attention in Australia and across the globe, quickly attracting numerous suspects, hoaxes and theories. The disappearance is widely credited with causing a change in Australian lifestyles, since parents began to believe that their children could no longer be presumed to be safe when unsupervised in public. The regular and widespread attention given to the case, its significance in Australian criminal history and the fact that the mystery of the children's disappearance has never been explained has led to the story being of continuous public interest more than half a century on. As of 2018, a $1 million reward has been offered for information related to the cold case by the South Australian government.
This Day in History: The McCulkin Murders happened on this day (January 16) in 1974. The McCulkin murders were the murders of Barbara McCulkin (34) and her two daughters, Vicki (13) and Leanne (11), in Queensland, Australia.
Their bodies were never located.
The victims disappeared from their home in Highgate Hill, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland. The daughters had been across the street attending a neighbour’s 10th birthday party, returning around 10:30 pm. Their mother had remained at home relaxing and drinking in the company of two men who had arrived in a distinctive coupe.
The McCulkins were reported missing by their estranged husband/father two days later. Investigations revealed an orange 2-door Valiant Charger had been seen in the driveway. Further, the family cats were locked inside, the beds had not been slept in, and the lights and other electrical items remained on. The overall police response was slow and ineffective and the case quickly turned cold.
On 2 April 1980, Vincent O'Dempsey, the owner of the Charger and a criminal acquaintance of the husband, and Garry Dubois, were charged with their abduction and murder. The case, however, fell apart due to insufficient evidence.
After a tipoff to Crime Stoppers, in October 2014, the pair were finally charged again based on information that the victims had been tied up, driven to bushland, raped, strangled, and buried. On 28 November 2016, Dubois (then aged 69) was found guilty of the murders. On 26 May 2017, O'Dempsey (then aged 78) was also found guilty of murder. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment on 1 June 2017.
The next day, Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath announced that the state government would re-open the coronial inquest into the March 1973 Whiskey Au Go Go fire. Another related case was the 23 February 1973 firebombing of Torino’s Nightclub, an insurance scam organised by Dubois on O’Dempsey’s orders. Justice Peter Applegarth said "it was clear Barbara McCulkin knew enough about each of the pair's roles in the nightclub bombings at the time for them to want to silence her."
This Day in History: The first reported sighting of the so-called Nullarbor Nymph was made on this day in 1971.
This report was by professional kangaroo shooters from Eucla in Western Australia, near the border with South Australia. They claimed to have seen a blond, white woman amongst some kangaroos, and backed their story with grainy amateur film showing a woman wearing kangaroo skins and holding a kangaroo by the tail. After further sightings were claimed, the story was reported around the world, and journalists descended upon the town of Eucla which had a population of 8 people at the time.
The incident was eventually revealed as a hoax, initiated as a publicity stunt. The girl on the film turned out to be a 17-year-old model named Janice Beeby. She did appear in a photograph taken later, as an evidence of the Nullarbor Nymph, but the woman in the original photograph used by the media to disseminate the hoax was Geneice Brooker, the partner of Laurie Scott, one of the kangaroo-shooter hoaxers. Scott admitted to Murray Nicoll of The News that the hoax was created by a publicist Geoff Pearce, of Melbourne, who happened to be in the Eucla Hotel and had contacts within the media.
However, "the world was captivated with her story and more and more legends grew around her. People wanted to know who she was and what caused her to live a feral lifestyle. People put up statues in her honor, and you have to know they made a movie about her in 1994." Source
This Day in History: On this day (November 21) in 2016, a sudden powerful wind in Melbourne, Australia, resulted in the death of 10 asthmatic people who succumbed to respiratory failure. This was due to a stark 37 mph wind that distributed ryegrass pollen into the moist air, rupturing them into very fine specks, particles small enough to enter people's lungs.
This anomaly may not be the strangest weather event in history. Like something straight out of Charles Fort's "Book of the Damned" there have been throughout history instances of raining fish and frogs. In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder documented storms of frogs and fish. In 1794, French soldiers saw toads fall from the sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near the French city of Lille. Rural inhabitants in Yoro, Honduras claim 'fish rain' happens there every summer, a phenomenon they call Lluvia de Peces.
On March 3, 1876, a meat shower occurred in Bath County, Kentucky, where what appeared to be chunks of red meat measuring approximately 2 by 2 inches fell from the sky.
In June 1874, an estimated 12 trillion locusts devasted the American Great Plains. Laura Ingalls-Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) wrote of the aftermath: “The whole prairie was changed. The grasses did not wave; they had fallen in ridges. The rising sun made all the prairie rough with shadows where the tall grasses had sunk against each other. The willow trees were bare. In the plum thickets, only a few plumpits hung to the leafless branches. The nipping, clicking, gnawing sound of the grasshoppers’ eating was still going on.”
In 1815, Indonesia went without a summer, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora. This also affected Europe, and the dark summer had a role in inspiring Mary Shelley’s famous horror classic, Frankenstein.
On January 6, 1839, a massive winter storm descended on Ireland and devasted Dublin. "A quarter of Dublin's buildings were damaged, and it was described as a "sacked city." Fires spread across County Longford, with winds picking up fires and dropping them from the sky over the rest of the countryside. Fields were stripped, and hundreds of thousands of trees fell. Tales say that water and fish were picked up and hurled miles across the countryside, that salt from the ocean doused fields in the center of the country." Source
On Black Monday in 1360 (Easter Monday) during the Hundred Years' War (1337–60), a freak hail storm struck and killed an estimated 1,000 English soldiers. The storm was so devastating that it caused more English casualties than any of the previous battles of the war.
On June 15, 1960, in what came to be called "Satan's Storm," a surge of heat encompassed parts of central Texas and temperatures rose to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Parents at the time wrapped their children in wet towels and bed sheets, and many there thought this was the end of the world.
In the late summer of 2001, southern India experienced rain that was blood red in color.
On January 2017 it snowed...in the Sahara Desert.
Then there is the case of Roy Sullivan, a man who holds the Guinness World Record for surviving seven different lightning strikes. He was struck on April 1942, July 1969, July 1970, spring 1972, August 1972, June 1976 and June 1977. Sullivan was a United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
